“That was amazing,” she whispered against his shoulder.
He shifted enough to look down on her, hand gliding down her side, igniting that slow burn of desire all over again. “You are amazing.”
She laughed at his compliment, not believing it for a moment.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nobody has ever told me that before.”
“Then your previous lovers were all fools.”
She sobered at that. “I’ve only had sex once before,” she said, and wanted to bite her tongue off for admitting that much.
He shifted to look at her, and she averted her eyes, preferring to stare at the dark whorls of hair on his muscled chest. “Once?”
She nodded, not daring to look up.
“Not a memorable experience?”
“Not one I care to bring to mind,” she said, hating that memories of that night threatened to rush back to life, to taint the pleasure she’d just experienced.
She shook her head, willing the dark past to retreat into the recesses of her mind. But the voices remained, a low nagging whisper of pleas and cries and threats, a living reminder of that night, that man’s total domination over her, and the ugly violation she’d lived with for years.
A woman never forgot being raped. She’d become an expert at keeping people at arm’s length until Luciano came back into her life.
He grasped her chin and forced her to face him, blue eyes intent on hers. “You will tell me someday, yes?”
That was the last thing she would do, now or ever. But admitting that would only prompt him to pester her for details she never wanted to reveal.
“Someday,” she lied.
She’d told no one she’d been raped by Luciano’s friend, afraid to challenge the threat her attacker had issued, wanting the whole thing buried. Forgotten. She intended to keep it that way.
And she had to believe that man had done the same. She’d certainly never heard any rumors connecting them, and Luciano seemed ignorant of the entire thing. Of all people, she would think he would have known and was so glad he didn’t.
For her, it would always be the black day in her life, over and done with but she would never forget. After seven years, nothing would be served by telling anyone, especially Luciano. She’d moved on. Hopefully she would never cross paths with that horrible man again.
“I have given you one good memory, but that isn’t enough, bella.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead, her cheeks, his lips hovering over hers. “Let’s make more for both of us.”
“Yes,” she breathed before his lips captured hers in a long, lazy kiss that sparked fire in the desire banked inside her, making her feel wanted, needed.
“Yes,” she whispered again between breaths, locking the door on the past and opening wide the portal to the present. She welcomed Luciano into her arms, her heart, as they plunged into the warm surf of passion, wanting to remember it when the darkness and fears intruded.
He was a drug in her veins and her blood fizzed, her control spiraling downward into a tide pool of passion. For one split second she nearly pulled back into her protective shell. But another searing kiss, coupled with the hot possessive glide of his hands up and down her back, banished the urge, making her want more of his touch, his kiss, his possession.
Her hands sought and found the hard, pulsing length of him. He groaned, rocking into her palm, as if begging her fingers to explore him. She did, stroking the silk-over-steel erection that grew in her palm. Her heartbeat quickened, the core of her wet and throbbing with want.
Her other hand slid down his thigh, the muscles there hard and powerful to a point. And then...she stilled, frowning as her fingers recognized the change in skin and the uneven shape. A scar, and a very deep one, she suspected.
“Enough playing,” he said, dragging her exploring hand to his chest.
His fingers found her core, stroking, teasing, and the questions that had ballooned to her mind popped. Each stroke strummed a lover’s song that whispered around them like silken ribbons, the melody intoxicating to her senses.
She’d dreamed of being loved like this for years, not believing it could ever come true. That sex with a man could only be better if she imagined it.
Now she knew that wasn’t true. Now that Luciano was literally in the palm of her hands, she would savor this forever. Her timidity and hard-learned caution diminished as desire and awareness of her own sensuality increased.
There was power in sex. Power in her own needs. Power in satisfying his as well.
She would deal with the consequences of embarking on an affair tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever they returned to the real world. For now she just wanted to savor the pleasure.
* * *
Luc lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. The lull of her even breathing and relaxed body tempted him to sleep as well. Yet old demons chose now to haunt him and remind him how close he’d come again to letting tender emotions blind him.
He was right there on the edge, enjoying this special moment with Caprice, wanting to believe she was nearly innocent. But how could he? Was it possible for a vibrant, passionate woman to have had experienced sex once yet satisfy a man of his experience?
His heart said yes but his cynical mind warned something was off, that she was not being straight with him.
He’d learned to distrust women from the best.
Isabella had been a very convincing liar. She’d said all the right words and done all the right things. His charming, deceitful wife had had great fun with the lofty position marriage to him had afforded her and had enjoyed spending his money on her every whim.
She’d relished using him.
Tension tightened his muscles and glazed his heart in ice, for he’d never denied her anything.
Isabella had been the supreme actress, sleeping in his bed and his arms every night. Professing her love.
A damned lie. She’d sneaked away during the day to be with her lover.
The hell of it was he hadn’t known, hadn’t suspected. Perhaps he never would have if he hadn’t spontaneously decided to fly to London and surprise her there during one of her solo shopping trips.
That was the end of his marriage. Divorce was the expected outcome, and she hadn’t fought it, seeking only a fat settlement.
Looking back on it now, he wondered if he should have gone through his life loving her, loving any children produced of their marriage. If he could have found contentment, she would be alive today. But he’d sent her away. Shamed. Scorned.
And she’d died in a horrible auto accident.
Guilt was a horrible thing to bear. His wife’s death. His brother’s crippling accident. Both could be laid at his door.
Those events had changed him. Hardened him.
Right now they were tainting a good moment in his life with Caprice that he wanted to preserve in memory. Yet how could he when he suspected she was lying to him about something in her past?
It would be impossible until he got to the truth.
That would come. He would uncover her secrets before he made another costly mistake with a woman.
* * *
Caprice wasn’t sure who fell asleep first, or who awakened first. One moment she was sated and warm lying in his arms on the floor. The next he was gently tipping her face to his and staring at her with eyes that always saw too much.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Yes. Fine.” Better than she thought she’d be, and that alone told her she’d made the right decision.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had only had one lover before me?”
Because she hadn’t had a lover. Her attacker didn’t deserve that title.
“What difference does it make?” she asked.
He hea
ved a sigh. “None, I guess. I just thought...you’d had more experience. Hell, I thought you’d had experience when I met you at the World Cup.”
“I admit I was naive but fearless.” To her own peril.
“I have thought long and hard about how poorly I treated you in the past,” he bit out, as if hating to admit that much.
“It’s okay. I was too young to understand that relationships were all a game to you.” Too young to realize that some men were only out to use and abuse.
She reached up to cup his jaw, desperate to connect with the man who’d just pleasured her beyond belief. Had granite ever felt this hard? She chanced a peek at him. Had blue eyes ever looked so icy cold?
He grasped her hand and pulled it away, and she felt the distancing yawn between them, felt the old rejection nip at her nerves. “I did you a favor, bella.”
“It didn’t feel like it at the time.” She rolled away and got to her feet, wrapping the towel around her naked body, breaking the physical contact, but still plagued with a jumble of good and bad memories.
“I was in the wake of a bitter divorce. You knew that.”
She nodded. “I heard rumors surrounding the end of your marriage and none of it put you in a good light. Is it true you threatened divorce unless your wife got a paternity test?”
He got to his feet, unabashedly naked. “Yes, which she refused to do. If you knew that, then why didn’t you ask me if it was true?”
“I didn’t believe you would do such a thing to your family.” Even now she had trouble accepting his matter-of-fact confession.
“You’d heard the truth and yet you flirted with me.” He shook his head. “My God, you were naive.”
“I call it trusting and loyal,” she added. And she still was in many respects.
“Yes, you have always been that way to me,” he said, eyes drilling into her so intimately she felt as if he were touching her still. “But that is not why I wanted you now.”
“You’ve made it clear from the start that you simply wanted rights to my therapy program,” she said. “I don’t have a problem with that or what just happened between us.”
She knew any relationship with him would simply be carnal lust. No emotional ties. No commitments. No promises.
His women were conveniences. Well paid, if the rumors were true. And well loved, if only physically. Now she was one of them.
“Good.” He stalked to the door and paused to look back at her. “You should be able to find suitable clothes in the closet. When you’re dressed, meet me in the great room.”
Then he was gone, not giving her the option to agree or balk. But then why would she?
She’d gotten what she asked for. No more. It was time to view this amazing design that may, or may not, be suitable for the therapy pod. Then she would get back to the lodge and reality.
Solitude. That’s what she needed to put all of this back into perspective, and soon.
Fifteen minutes later she found jeans and jerseys, still bearing tags, hanging in the closet. Considering she had nothing to wear, and refusing to belabor the point of wearing something intended for another woman, she rid them of the tags and dressed, then finished towel-drying her hair.
She was clean and incredibly charged with energy, considering the day’s events, when she walked into the great room. And stopped.
The amazing expanse of glass on either side of the massive stone fireplace, complete with roaring fire, made it feel as if they were suspended over a fathomless gorge, as if she were hanging on to this primitive ledge. She couldn’t image a more perfect view.
“I’ve never quite seen anything like this,” she said, near breathless.
“Is that good or bad?” he asked, the warmth of his body against hers telling her he was far too near again.
“Good. Has this place been in your family for long?”
Again, the crooked smile that made her skin tingle and her stomach tighten. “No. I acquired it after my first World Cup win with intention of restoring it to a quality rifugio.”
“But you didn’t,” she guessed.
He shook his head, his smile disappearing like the clouds that suddenly shrouded the jagged peaks in the distance. “Because of the disrepair here, it took undue time restoring it. So long, in fact, that I’d begun to long for a secret place to get away from the world. But the wait was worth it.”
She took it all in, understanding his need for a retreat and finding this very nice, very relaxing and cozy. “Is this the design that you thought I would love?”
“No, that is upstairs. After you,” he said, making a sweeping motion toward the multiple landings of the long staircase that separated the great room from the galley area, suddenly treating her as a guest.
The low risers between the trio of landings said more about his need for rest than any explanation could convey. Each landing provided a place to pause with an arresting vista that differed from the one before it. They were a reminder of the majestic mountains and challenging runs that would call to any accomplished skier.
Yet Luciano hadn’t gone back. This was the retreat he’d designed for himself. Where he could hide and heal his broken body. But what about his troubled soul? she wondered.
That question troubled her as she reached the top level. It took her a moment to scan the massive space. Peaceful was the only word that came to mind. The furnishings were dressed in variant blues and browns and whites, colors that melded in with artistic murals and the living landscape vista just beyond the two walls of glass, which opened naturally onto the vast sky and rugged mountain range.
“This is it,” he said, pride and something indefinable resonating in his voice.
He didn’t have to tell her this was his bedroom. She knew it the second she walked in.
The entire space felt as vast as the rugged range, dominated by a bed that screamed pleasure. And she knew that was exactly what she would find there.
She looked away from it, body burning and tingling anew. What had happened to the instinctual warning that heartache would be the end result of an affair? Was the promised pleasure worth the pain that would come?
“This is beyond unique,” she said, focusing on the design again instead of the arresting man who threatened to dominate her thoughts, who made her trust him, want him. “The architectural and interior design make the entire space seem as if I am standing on the mountain.”
“Yes.” He remained by the window, his back to her now. “This place helped heal me.”
“After the accident?”
He nodded. “My ex-wife’s death as well. Can you understand that?”
“Yes, I think so. You loved her. Grieved her death.”
He scrubbed a hand along his nape and sighed. “It is true. Many of my friends could not understand why I cared, why I shut myself away after her death.”
“Who asked for the divorce?”
“I did.” He braced an arm on the window and stared out at the vista. “Does that surprise you?”
She wouldn’t lie. “In a way.”
He faced her then, back to the window and arms locked over his chest, a wall keeping anyone from getting too close. “I found her in bed, in the arms of another man. It was an ugly confrontation with passions and tempers running high. Finally she admitted that he was her lover and their affair had been going on long before our marriage.”
She pressed her fingertips to her mouth, unable to imagine how awful it would be to catch your loved one cheating. “You must have been heartbroken.”
“Yes, but I was furious over her betrayal,” he said, his voice dark.
“If she had a lover she refused to leave, why did she marry you?”
“Marriage afforded her a lavish allowance, the bulk of which ended up funneled to him, I suspect.” He drummed his fingers on
the glass panel, his expression remote. “They were expecting a child.”
She cringed at the added pain Luciano went through. “So you divorced her.”
“As quickly and quietly as possible.”
She shook her head, stunned that the ugly rumors she’d heard about Isabella Duchelini were true. Betrayal like Luciano had received at his wife’s hand cut to the heart and drew blood that stained a soul.
In many ways he was starting over, but only partially.
“Why didn’t you return to skiing?” she asked.
His shoulders shifted into such a tight line she was surprised she didn’t hear the twang of muscles and tendons snap and break. “I had my reasons.” He faced her, all warmth gone from his features, making it clear he wasn’t going to share those reasons with her, so she forced herself to change the subject. “You paid more attention to tactile detail, which in turn reflected the mood that resonated with you.”
“Good, you see it, too,” he said, and she nodded. “I didn’t realize how very much I needed a retreat until the accident.”
She certainly understood the desperate need to escape a horrible incident. Her refuge had been her lodge and a redirection of her life. Taking control again, if only in baby steps.
In time, the personal attack she’d suffered receded to the back of her mind. It was rarely recalled, yet the pain and shame were never forgotten.
No, she didn’t have to ask how much his loss and his terrible accident pained him emotionally and physically. One look at his drawn features proved he suffered deeply on both levels.
“I wish I would have been able to help you then,” she said, hesitating before laying her hand atop his.
But on what level could she have helped? Emotionally? Maybe. Physically? Not likely considering what she’d endured.
She would like to think she could have put her own feelings aside, but in all honesty she wasn’t sure. It had taken her years to recover to this stage. And besides, the point was moot as that was the time she’d delved deeper into her studies, putting her degree first in her life and taking that vow to go it alone.
He brushed off her hand and stormed to the window. “I couldn’t think beyond my own need to be alone. Secluded.” He shook his head. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
Bound by the Italian's Contract Page 9
